Robotics and Artificial Intelligence are closely related areas though their research interests and topics diverted in past. Recently, the progress in both areas brings robotics and artificial intelligence together again and higher-level deliberative functions such as action planning are being integrated into usually reactive robotics systems to increase their autonomy as well as to simplify their control. The special track addresses research results on the border between robotics (and general intelligent agents) and AI techniques with the aim to bridge the enlarging gap between the areas.

The goal of the track is bringing researchers for now diverted areas of robotics, intelligent agents, and artificial intelligence back together to work on novel integrated approaches for development of autonomous systems, both physical and virtual.

This track is intended to AI community that applies own results in real environments using physical (robots) and virtual agents as well as to researchers in related areas namely robotics, computer games, and intelligent agents to present own challenges and solutions and to grasp novel AI techniques applicable in real-life problems.

The Florida AI Research Society (FLAIRS) hosts the conference in cooperation with the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) since 1988 so FLAIRS is one of the oldest AI conferences. The 30-th conference is organized at Marco Island, Florida, USA in May 22-24, 2017.

This is already fourth edition of the special track, the previous editions were organized at 2014, 2015, and 2016.

Papers and contributions are encouraged for any work relating to increasing autonomy and reasoning capabilities of agents either physical (robots) or virtual (such as game characters). We in particular encourage submissions that are integrating approaches and methods from different areas and contribute to bridging more research areas such as robotics, computer games, and intelligent agents. Topics of interest may include (but are in no way limited to):

Interested authors should format their papers according to AAAI formatting guidelines. The papers should be original work (i.e., not submitted, in submission, or submitted to another conference while in review). Papers should not exceed 6 pages (4 pages for a poster) and are due by November 21, 2016. For FLAIRS-30, the 2017 conference, the reviewing is a double blind process. Please do not disclose your name and affiliation in the paper. Papers must be submitted as PDF through the EasyChair conference system, which can also be accessed through the main conference web site. Note: do not use a fake name for your EasyChair login - your EasyChair account information is hidden from reviewers. Authors should indicate the Autonomous Robots and Agents special track for submissions. The proceedings of FLAIRS will be published by the AAAI. Authors of accepted papers will be required to sign a form transferring copyright of their contribution to AAAI. FLAIRS requires that there be at least one full author registration per paper.

Paper submission deadline: 21st November 2016
Notification of paper decisions: 23rd January 2017
Poster abstract submission: 6th February, 2017
Poster abstract notification: 13th February, 2017
AUTHOR registration: 20th February, 2017
Final version of papers due: 27th February 2017

All dates are assumed as midnight HST.

• Utilitarian Approach to Privacy in Distributed Constraint Optimization Problems
  Julien Savaux, Julien Vion, Sylvain Piechowiak, Rene Mandiau, Katsutoshi Hirayama, Toshihiro Matsui, Makoto Yokoo, Shakre Elmane and Marius Silaghi.
• Enhancing Multi-Objective Reinforcement Learning with Concept Drift
  Frederick C. Webber and Gilbert Peterson. Enhancing Multi-Objective
• Listen to my body: Does making friends help influence people?
  Ron Artstein, David Traum, Jill Boberg, Alesia Gainer, Jonathan Gratch, Emmanuel Johnson, Anton Leuski and Mikio Nakano
• Modeling Temporally Dynamic Environments for Persistent Autonomous Agents
  Matthew O'Brien and Ronald Arkin. Modeling
• Towards Joint Human-Robotic Solutions to Surveillance Problems(short)
  Christopher Reardon and Jonathan Fink
• DTMF Audio Communication for NAO Robots
  Kyle Poore, Joseph Masterjohn, Andreas Seekircher, Pedro Pena and Ubbo Visser
• Effects of task consideration order on decentralized task allocation using time-variant response thresholds
  Annie Wu and Vera Kazakova
• Using Machine Learning to Identify Activities of a Flying Drone from Sensor Readings
  Roman Bartak and Marta Vomlelová